Tuesday, October 22, 1996

Things I'm Glad I Did
by MF Runkle

[Editor's Note: This fribble is taken from a guest article MF Runkle wrote for the Teen AOL Folder.]

Two weeks ago, I started thinking about what to write for this forum. It's easy as a forty-year-old man to write a very preachy and condescending piece for younger people. I always hated that when I was a teen; there were always plenty of older people willing to tell me how to run my life. There were always things I should do, and shouldn't do.

The next bad way to write is to recount all of my failures and say, "I wish I hadn't done this ...." I still hate hearing people talk this way. We all make the best decisions we can at the time, with the information we have. Sometimes those decisions aren't so good, but we have to live with them. Instead, I'd like to list some things that I am glad I did. Here we go:

I'm glad I didn't follow all the rules. I never did things the way people said I should do things. In the end, I was right. I didn't go to college right after high school, like I was told I should do, and I was more mature and ready when I did go. I didn't go to a private college like my family wanted; I went to a state school. I wasn't burdened with debt when I graduated either. It also turned out to be one of the better engineering schools in the country. I'm glad I started graduate school at 39, even though many people say that's too old.

I'm glad I studied English under Brother Robert O'Kane in ninth and tenth grades. He encouraged me to write, and told me that I had a lot of talent. This was in spite of my tendency to infuriate him with what I actually wrote about. Many times I got an "A" and was chewed out at the same time because of my "cynical attitude".

I'm glad I did things I felt like doing simply because it seemed like fun. Things like driving to the beach on a whim. Driving to Cumberland, Maryland to see if they had a McDonald's out there. Wandering around Washington, D.C. aimlessly. Sometimes doing things like that opens up interesting experiences that you never expected. Douglas Adams' character Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency never carries a map. He figures he'll get where he needs to go if he needs to get there, and if he doesn't, he'll get where he was supposed to go instead. Sometimes life is like that, and you have to do things on a whim.

I'm glad I joined the Army. I didn't go anywhere but Ft. Dix, NJ, but I met people I would never have met otherwise, people from different races and economic backgrounds than mine, who just aren't in the same circle of individuals I would normally encounter. I also was treated like a man there, and was expected to behave like one. That helped more than I ever could have imagined.

I'm glad I've traveled to places no one in their right mind would want to go. Places like Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas, Macora in Honduras, and Panama City, Panama. Some of the best places in the world are where nobody goes.

I'm glad I went to college, and studied engineering. Not only because it got me a job, but because I like it. It's worth more than money to do something you really like. It seems everybody criticizes engineers, saying they're dull, have no people skills, so on. Well, they do the same with doctors, lawyers, salesman, and just about everybody else. Unfortunately, almost every occupation is criticized (look what we do to brokers here), so I figure it's best to choose your occupation by what you want to do.

There's a lot more things that I'm glad I did. I could go into how I'm glad I married Barbara, had two sons, and so on. Significantly, the things I am happiest about are what I wanted to do. They are not things I was pushed or pressured into doing by my parents or my peers. Its exciting being young, but you know, it's exciting being forty, too. I'm still adding to the list of things I'm glad I did, and probably will until I die. I hope that you all do many things you are glad you did as you grow older, and I thank you for having me here as a guest.

Transmitted: 10/22/96